European Commission (EC), in 2013, stated in the Report “Reducing early school leaving: Key messages and policy support” that Early school leaving (ESL) is a multi-faceted and complex problem caused by a cumulative process of disengagement. It is a result of personal, social, economic, education or family-related reasons, where schools play an important role in addressing ESL but they cannot and should not work in isolation. The disparities in dropout rate among partner countries, favor the best practices and methods exchange in the present project's context between schools placed in different countries and the contribution to tackle ESL in disadvantaged areas. The partnership in this project intent to develop different innovative approaches to help schools, students and families/parents to prevent ESL. We will work with systems, methodology and concrete tools to improve communication between school and families/parents. Project will work to improve pedagogic at schools, to enable students to have homework easier to deal with alone or together with parents. Finally, the project will develop software/App, which will collect data suitable to give schools early warning about students in danger of being an ESL. Since the project is transnational, the ability to understand cultural contexts in using developet tools, will also be an important result of the project.Proejct will conduct a joint Staff Training, where teachers and staff from partners work through developed material to get an ownership to it. Then the schools will carry out a pilot, testing all or elements of the tools to harvest experiences and necessary feedback to complete both methods, educational tools and the software.Outputs will be translated into the national languages and in English to be easily adapted to schools from other countries and disseminated through different channels, including social networks or events. Over 2000 people (students, family members and teachers) in the activity’s implementation, in order to validate the quality and effectiveness of the planned outputs.Long-term benefits will be the creation of a family engagement model at European level that effectively connects parents/carer with pupils, mean increasing families participation in their learning. By doing this, pupils’ achievements at school and adaptation to school will be better and Early School Leaving will be reduced in areas where ESL rates are high. School staff will improve their link with parents and families, their pedagogic activities and early warning system. Schools will improve their services’ quality and the link with families and local community, playing an integrator role in the society.

"<< Background >>Cultural tourism is gaining ground against other forms of tourism in the EU, with the European Commission indicating on their website that 4 out of 10 European tourists choose their destination based on its cultural offering. In rural areas, tourism comprises of mostly small businesses which suffer from lack of cooperation, and workforce lack of skills and qualifications. According to the EU factsheet presented in 2017 at the Tallin Digital Summit, 169 million (44%) of Europeans aged 16-74 years old, do not have basic digital skills. In the context of DECODE, the percentage of individuals’ basic digital skills differs, with Cypriots and Greeks reaching 43% and 46% respectively, while Norwegians, Germans and Austrians reaching nearly 70% each. As expressed in the title of the project, DECODE aims to decoding European trends and needs in upskilling and reskilling cultural tourism operators, professionals and volunteers in rural and/or deprived areas. Observing that cultural tourism operators, municipality workers, local rural shops etc. are not offered the needed support to increase the rural and/or deprived area’s cultural potential, we developed DECODE. These workers and volunteers are rarely offered what they need to develop their skills and competencies, which makes them low-skilled and low-qualified for their jobs. The aim of the project is to provide the learners with the necessary skills and competencies, to promote their local rural and/or deprived area in the field of cultural tourism, with a training course and the use of digital means. DECODE addresses these needs of local communities, authorities, professionals, volunteers in the field of cultural tourism with a comprehensive tool to enhance their knowledge, skills and competencies. The course and its results will also be made available to the wide public through the DECODE platform, which will be equipped also with an open badges accreditation system, in order to validate the learners' knowledge.<< Objectives >>The DECODE project aims to train the target group on how to use modern means of communication and digital tools for promoting cultural tourism in the rural and/or deprived areas. Accordingly, the project will foster flexible and adapting upskilling pathways for operators in the field of cultural tourism in rural and/or deprived areas. It will identify skills needed in the field and provide the target group with a training programme with the support of a digital learning environment.The objectives of DECODE are:• To address the needs of local communities, municipal and community staff, service providers, professionals interested in the promotion of cultural tourism in rural and/or deprived areas, tourism students etc.• To enrich the skills of the target group in rural and/or deprived areas.• To advance learning attitudes and the adaptation of high-quality learning opportunities.• To develop and utilise digital tools for the development and sustainability of cultural tourism in rural and/or deprived areas.• To develop recommendations for cultural tourism stakeholders that will improve the practices of cultural tourism across the EU.The project will promote upskilling pathways for tourism operators, aiming to lower the skills and competences gap, and will provide the learners with innovative training based on digital technology.<< Implementation >>The methodology which will be implemented throughout the project is based on project partners’ experience, skills and expertise, and has been already discussed and agreed upon by everyone involved in the project. All foreseen project activities, big or small, play a key role in the smooth operation and development of the project.The project activities that will lead to the project objectives and results involve:• Partners agreement signed between the partners• Financial and management plan from the coordinator and all the partners• Monitoring and evaluation plan from Akadimos and all the partners• Impact plan by the coordinator• Communication, sharing and promotional plan by ISEDE throughout the project• Transnational meetings to monitor and review the activities of the project, which will allow close collaboration with all the partners• Two Project Results:- PR1 will design and develop an online course for tourism operators’ upskilling, with material that can be studied online or offline, as well as the DECODE online resource platform containing all the interactive material and an open badges system for validating the competencies and skills gained by trained tourism operators.- PR2 will provide Policy Recommendations to stakeholders in the field of cultural tourism, which will be informed by the pedagogical framework for cultural tourism, as well as through measures for the impact of cultural tourism in rural areas.• 5 Multiplier Events in all partner countries (M22) with 30 local participants each, so as to promote the project and its results• One Final Conference in Nicosia, Cyprus (M23) with 70 local participants, so as to present the project, its outcomes, results, with the presence of the media• One Learning, Teaching, Training activity, serving as a ""Train the Trainer event"", in Vienna, Austria with 12 adult educators.<< Results >>The project will promote upskilling pathways for cultural tourism operators in rural and/or deprived areas, aiming to lower the skills and competencies gap, and will provide the learners with an innovative, interactive training program and an open badges accreditation system, with the use of digital technology.The results expected during the project and on its completion are the following:Short-term results (during the project life cycle):• Promote upskilling pathways for cultural tourism operators, both professionals and volunteers, in rural and/or deprived areas.• Innovative, interactive training programme for cultural tourism oprators in rural and/or deprived areas.• 1 Learning, Teaching, Training Activity for at least 12 adult educators in the field of cultural tourism.• 6 national reports on the outcomes of the LTTA for the improvement of PR1.• At least 60 local operators n the field of tourism in rural and/or deprived areas will be trained on the contents of the DECODE training course.• Provide for an online resource platform containing interactive material and an open badges accreditation system for skill valitation.• Carry out three face-to-face transnational meetings and 1 online.• 6 Multiplier Events (5 national and 1 transnational) • Provide for a sharing and promotional plan and strategy• Provide for networking opportunities for partners.• Internal documents/results developed within the project management and implementation activities, such as project work plan, reports for the National Agency, financial reports,evaluation reports, surveys, presentations etc.All participating organisations aim to integrate the DECODE project results in their daily practice, as our goal is that the outcomes will produce adequate results from the participants involved in project activities. Also, the organisations will raise awareness of the need to provide more quality education and training.Long-term results (after the project life cycle):• Improve and accelerate the training of cultural tourism operators, professionals and volunteers, and people in the cultural tourism sector in rural and/or deprived areas.• Support rural and deprived areas to enhance and develop their cultural tourism product.• Offer networking opportunities for local communities.• Take into consideration a holistic approach for adult learners, and efficient practices to create autonomous learners.• Establish solutions to autonomous learning through the online resource tool, which will offer the potential of expanding and transferring knowledge to other fields, but also extending geographically in other EU Member States and at international level.• Local and national organisations, NGOs, SMEs and other organisations will be equipped to use the project outcomes into their daily practice by providing awareness and relevanttraining to adults."

"Todays generation of youths have other challenges than the previous, like pressure to perform, social anxiety disorder and emotion regulation problems in adolescents. These factor gives a risk for the development of depression and alcohol/substance use or dependence, giving significant functional impairment in educational and work achievement. The economic consequences of social anxiety disorder are considerable, with a high level of diminished work productivity, unemployment and an increased utilisation of medical services amongst sufferers.Finding in preliminary studies conduct by partners for this project, both research and local findings, tells that self-confidence, self-knowledge and self-esteem are important factors which influence a lot, factors which do not need to be static, they are changeable. Since this is a major challenge among youths, all this problems will appear in the VET classroom and other VET training arenas also. It will be the “normal” teachers and trainers who deals with this in addition to give professional training and education. The teacher is the most important factor in creating good learning opportunities. Today, teaching and support functions for disadvantaged students are divided between teaching staff and supportive tutors. We need to empower professional teachers and trainers to cope with the ""whole"" student. The project will work to improve quality assurance of NEETs learning and better track the developing progress of learners, by develop criteria’s for transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications for educators. From our preparatory work, we see that most VET teachers and trainers need tools, methods, information and knowledge for how to deal with this, without further stigmatizing the youth. Vocational education trainers and young adults endangered of being NEETS need to learn from one another and teach each other, building synergies and compassion in order to empower self-confidence and resonance, participation and engagement. Included education can have a positive impact against apathy, unemployment, and addition can be assured.To deal with those challenges, the project aims to create knowledge, increase competence and methodology for how teachers and trainers can use ordinary learning situations to improve self-confidence, self-knowledge and self-esteem among youths. This include the learning situation itself and different aspects of following up the youths. We will call this “Included education”, meaning teachers and trainers learn to include more than you normally expect is part of a lesson. In order to concretely empower youths at school and in their everyday life, the project wants to:-Develop a theoretical and practical framework of Included education for learning/teaching, taking into account informal and non-formal aspects of education, both for the learners & educators. The work will be summarized in a curriculum for training/follow-up processes. -Set a methodology pack – Development of the Training for Trainers materials and guidelines for effective “Included education” competencies and learning aimed at education, training and follow up processes, based on the results of the previous framework. This methodology pack creation of blended training material for educators, digital tools to follow up each and pilot project on teachers and trainers at local level. -Create criteria for certification of trainers/teachers/coaches who conduct education, training and follow up process to ensure quality in whole process. This task will also include the creation of assessment tools to support the certification process. -Set a short-term joint staff train the trainer event [C1]: 3 participants per country among teachers, educators and trainers working with youth education and training to will improve their knowledge of digital financial competences and better their training competencies-Local certification of teachers and trainers in our methodology packEach partner will conduct a pilot project, where the developed methodology package and certification tools will be tested in all countries. The partners will cover various professional aspects of included education which overall cover a multitude of opportunities.As a result of the project, the educators will have much better quality in teaching and traing. The positive effects of training will likely motivate more NEETs to undertake training. In order to achieve longer term benefits, the project’s methodology is centered around a close cooperation with all stakeholders, such as governmental education institutions, employer and employee organizations and business sector. The professional network of the project partners aims to create a network where one reaches as many potential companies/participants/students as possible in a given region, and show how it is possible to work together in order to implement Included Education as a method to empower NEETs."

The OECD report “Education and COVID-19: Focusing on the long-term impact of school closures (July,20)” states it takes time to adapt and switch to distance-learning, international reports highlighted the difficulties schools face to integrate the technologies of information and communication into the classroom This potential learning loss is determined by two concurring factors:- how much students have learnt during school closures — the “intensive margin” — refers to the efficiency of education continuity solutions. - how many students who continued to learn during the school closures —the “extensive margin” —refers to the share of students engaged in the education continuity solutions.Being able to exploit the potential of digital solutions is not only a question of digital skills among teachers and students, but also challenges given school management in order to develop and implement their strategy for Digital school, since successfully use of devices, tools, software does not automatically make teachers perform better and students learn more. The target groups of this project is schools and its staff and teachers.Summarized the project aims to 1.Create methods, tools and guidelines within digital pedagogical competences among educators. What is success criteria, evaluate/assess their students in an online environment. 2.Create knowledge about and development guidelines for practical use of open educational resources and equip teachers with the skills / knowledge of developing their own digital materials. 3.Create easy to use, low and secure E-Communication tool for improved communication between school and home, which require a minimum of digital skills to implement by both schools, teachers, students and parents. 4.Create and promote the European label “Digital Friendly Schools”, a certification for the schools that apply the guidelines developed inside the project. The three former outputs will bring to the definition of a set of requirements and steps for acquiring this recognition! All this put together will be project methodology package, which contains a report of methods, tools, guidelines and checklists within digital pedagogical readiness competences, a Video channel sharing tutorial videos with good practice usage of chosen open source educational resources as well as well as digital resources on project web site. The certification label “Digital friendly schools” is made as a booklet in order to support digital transformation processes among schools. In parallel with this work, the needed E-Communication tool will be developed and tested, first within partnership, then among all associated partner schools.All organisations have experiences from working with educational matters, although having different approaches. This difference is one of the main strengths in project, which project will fully utilize. This kind of partnership reflexes the needed way to work in order to have both competence, energy and time to realise such good intentions as this project deals with.The partnership also reflects the way project will work to maximize the impact. We have expert partners, schools and teachers as well as school owners at local, regional and national level. All necessary to have quality from development till implementation. A Joint Staff training with experts and teachers from each partner in order to learn and improve the created solutions will be a very important activity to both test, evaluate and improve our work. The experiences from this LTT will be used conduct several pilot project among a huge number of associated partner schools. At end of project there will be a complete innovative methodology pack and E-Communication tool. Finally results will be disseminated The final results and outputs will be disseminated through events, network, digital channels etc. both among partners, associated partners, local and regionally as well as nationally and internationally.

Many countries struggle with high unemployment and high school dropout rates among young people. There are many reasons for this, but several research reports states that the proportion of young people struggling with various psychological challenges are increasing, in some places as high as 30%. This is linked to social skills, inability to work with others, poor self-confidence and low self-esteem. Rarely do these problems solve themselves.At the same time, the proportion of young people gaming online games is very high. For many, this is a diversion from everyday life and is perceived as motivating. Youths and gaming have come to stay, and instead of considering it as a problem, we can consider gaming as an opportunity and source for energy to development.This project will use youth’s motivation in gaming and use gaming as a resource to develop young people's social skills. A collaborative partnership with youth organizations, established social enterprises, educational authorities and universities will implement an innovative approach to develop methods, tools and activities to be used while the youths are gaming with or against other youths.The project will establish two groups of young people, composed of youths from all partner countries. One group will be influenced by developed methods, tools and activities, while the other has status as control group.The project will first develop suitable mapping tools, which map social skills, ability to interact, self-confidence and self-esteem. The participating youths are mapped before and after being influenced by activities while gaming, to measure the impact of developed methods, tools and activities.Developed methods, tools and activities will, after testing, evaluation and improvement, be put together into a methodology pack, which is supported by digital training modules. This package will be flexible, in order to easily be adapted and tailored to different types of organizations working to develop and support youths with challenges similar to this project.The project collaborates with authorities, municipalities and other types of organizations in all partner countries. This collaboration will provide a solid sustainability for project's results.The developed material will provide schools, youth organizations, social enterprises and other types of organsiations a new and unique approach for working with a target group that which often is difficult to interact with. Using the youths' self-motivation within online gaming to create change.